Nobel Prize winner delivers public lecture at Lancaster University

One of the world’s leading economists is heading to Lancaster this autumn.

Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth will deliver the inaugural Andrews and Brunner Lecture at Lancaster University on Monday, September 9.

He will speak to an audience of academics, business leaders and members of the public in the University’s Management School (6pm start).

Professor Roth, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2012, along with Lloyd Shapley, for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.

He has made ground-breaking contributions in the field of market design, experimental economics, and game theory, with his work influencing economic theory and computer science and helping to solve real-world problems.

He will discuss banned markets in the lecture, entitled ‘Controversial Markets’, looking at examples such as surrogacy, prostitution and drugs, and how legal restrictions have led to black markets in these areas. A question and answer session will follow.

Professor Eyal Winter, P.W.S. Andrews and Elizabeth Brunner Chair in Industrial Economics in Lancaster University Management School’s Department of Economics, is delighted to be welcoming Professor Roth, who oversaw his post-doctoral studies.

He said: “It is a great honour for us to host Professor Roth here at Lancaster University. He is one of the world’s pre-eminent economists, and has worked not just in the field of business but with research affecting the health and educational worlds.

“We are sure that anyone who comes along to hear his lecture will leave having been both informed and entertained by a globally influential and immensely talented speaker.”

As well as the public lecture, Professor Roth will also lead two workshops at the University.

One for academics will feature presentations by economists from the Universities of Warwick, Essex and Nottingham, and ETH Zurich, as well as by Professor Winter. A second will focus on school choice, with a policy-oriented session looking at his research in that sphere.

Professor Roth’s lecture is the first by a Nobel Prize winner in Economics winner at Lancaster University, and marks the start of a series of lectures presented by renowned figures of the economic profession. A second is planned for 2020.

Attendance is open and free, but online registration is required. Registration is available here: lancaster.ac.uk/abl2019